ST. CLOUD -- The face of a clock changes over time, as does a human face. The face of a diocese also changes. Fortunately for a diocese, it can plan for those changes -- preparing for the pendulum swings and ironing our the wrinkles.

The Diocese of St. Cloud has been busy with such planning. The result -- the Strategic Pastoral Plan for the Diocese of St. Cloud "to 2010 and Beyond" -- is being published in a special June 8, 2000 edition of the St. Cloud Visitor.

The map of the plan shows at a glance the diocese's projection of how the parish landscape will likely take shape over the next decade -- which parishes will be twinned, clustered into groups of three or more, or closed. It is projected that there will only be 21 "single" parishes by 2010, compared to 70 at present.

The narrative text on pages 4-5 and 8-9 explains the plan for each parish in more detail, including how parishes will work together with pastoral teams and share resources.

The narratives and map are not the way the diocese will look on June 29, 2000, when the newest round of priestly pastoral assignments takes effect. Indeed, it may well never look exactly as it appears here. No plan is written in granite -- even in a diocese whose seat is known as the "Granite City."

The plan is a response to projections that the number of active priests available for parish ministry in the diocese -- now about 105 -- will decrease to about 70 or so by 2010. But it is also a response to shifts in population within the diocese, to growing numbers of qualified lay people available to serve the church, and to the increasingly varied and specialized ministerial needs of people in the diocese.

"We as Catholic people need to embrace the challenges and opportunities we share with our priests and others serving our church and our parishes as we begin the new millennium," said Thomas Keaveny, director of the diocese's Planning Office who led the development of the strategic pastoral plan.

The projected decline in the number of priests is perhaps the major challenge that Catholics in the diocese must face and embrace. There may be as many as 40 fewer priests available to serve in parishes by 2010, Keaveny said. The Catholic population is projected to increase. Something will have to give.

The plan aims to ensure that "what gives" won't be pastors "giving out" under the strain of trying to deal with an unreasonable sacramental and pastoral workload. Rather, "what gives," it is hoped, will be pastors "giving up" -- delegating, that is -- some of their non-sacramental duties to capable lay people and deacons on their parish staffs, tapping into their gifts in order to take up much of the day-to-day-business and pastoral slack.

"Priest burn-out is a concern," Keaveny said. "Most of our guys now do three, four or even five (Masses) a weekend, not counting weddings and funerals." A reasonable workload for priests is part of the plan, he said, which calls for priests to celebrate no more than three weekend Masses. During the development of the pastoral plan, the diocese began conducting Mass attendance counts during certain times of the year to determine how filled the pews were and if parishioners' spiritual needs could be accommodated by celebrating fewer Masses.

The three-Mass-per-priest guide combined with declining numbers of parish priests will mean that as many as 24 parishes may celebrate Mass only every other weekend, sharing in a Eucharistic celebration at a neighboring parish on the weekends without Mass at their own.

"That gives those parishes an opportunity to remain open as a faith community," said Keaveny, adding that the plan was developed making every effort to close as few parishes as possible. Four of the diocese's 139 parishes have been identified to close.

The plan calls for at least 80 additional deacons and religious women and other lay people to be hired for pastoral ministry positions across the diocese, Keaveny said. These parish staff members -- who will require professional education and training -- will help compensate for the smaller number of priests, and will assist pastors so they do not become overwhelmed with the business of the parish.

Keaveny noted that lay people already have become increasingly involved on parish staffs in recent decades. To date, about a dozen parishes have hired parish business managers, for example, and there are now 85 parish nurses serving in the diocese, up from just four in 1995. There are about 25 full-time youth ministers, he added, and several pastoral associate positions that didn't exist 10 years ago.

"That is not to say that vocations to the priesthood and religious life are not essential to the life of the church in central Minnesota" Keaveny said. "There is a fundamental love for the Eucharist in this diocese. But empowering the laity to serve the church is what Vatican II was all about."

The Plan recommends cooperation and sharing of resources among parishes -- even single parishes. For twinned and clustered parishes, the plan encourages the formation of pastoral teams consisting of priests, pastoral associates, deacons and other parish staff to serve all members of the twinned or clustered community, as is already happening to some extent in the diocese. The five clustered parishes in St. Anna, St. Wendel, Opole and Holdingford, for example, share two priests as pastors and a pastoral associate, secretary/bookkeeper, youth minister and director of religious education.

"Teams should be interdependent." Keaveny said, "The gifts of people serving twinned and clustered parishes should be available to all parishes involved. The team concept of parish ministry is important. It gives people options." Parishioners, for example, might approach Father A, Father B, a deacon, a sister, or a lay staff member, depending on their ministerial needs or with whom they are most comfortable.

The plan also gives priests a variety of options. They may serve in one of the currently 70 single parishes, 24 twinned-parish communities or six clusters of parishes -- numbers that are projected to change to 21, 16 and 23, respectively over the next decade. Priests serving clusters (three or more parishes) can either share a residence with a fellow priest or live separately. And the plan still allows for priests and other parish personnel to share their gifts as specialists in a large parish or in a variety of ministries in a smaller parish.

The plan is a culmination of three years of learning about other dioceses' planning processes. The diocese gathered state demographic data, parish statistics, maps and planning process information. The Planning Office developed and conducted a parish pastoral life survey -- getting input from 2,228 respondents from across the diocese -- and gathered input from all 139 parishes in the diocese, conducting parish planning dialogues in 131 of those parishes. Priests reviewed a draft of the plan at a presbyteral assembly last November and offered suggestions for modification.

Among the parish life goals identified as very important by the pastoral life survey were meeting the needs of youth in parishes, protecting human life, helping families build relationships and welcoming newcomers into parishes.

The strategic pastoral plan's recommended changes are expected to unfold gradually over the next 20 years. As this unfolding proceeds, the twinnings, clusterings and landscape of that map may well be somewhat different from what is mapped out on pages 6-7 of this Visitor.

"The strategic pastoral plan is a series of recommendations, not a hard and fast blueprint," Keaveny said.

Bishop Kinney compared the strategic plan to a family budget which get modified over the course of time to meet unforeseen family situations that arise.

"Is it written in stone? No way. It will change appreciably over the next 10 years," the bishop said. "This map is not exactly the way it's going to be in 10 years, but it's important to get something down on paper. At least we have the guidelines so we know what we have to work with and where we're generally going."

The groundwork for the pastoral plan was laid during the late 1980s to mid-1990s by the Diocesan Planning Council under the leadership of Father Gregory Lieser.

Impetus for a strategic pastoral plan gained steam shortly after Bishop Kinney became head of the St. Cloud Diocese in 1995. In 1997 -- in order to ensure that local Catholics would have sufficient sacramental and pastoral nourishment for years to come, and that the resources of the diocese would be best used to provide for their pastoral care -- he created a diocesan Planning Office and appointed Keaveny director. Wheels were set in motion to develop a strategic pastoral plan for the diocese by Pentecost (June 11), 2000.

The image of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fish springs to Bishop Kinney's mind when he ponders the pastoral plan. According to the Gospel, a multitude of more than 5,000 followers of Christ were fed with five loaves and two fish on a mountainside near the Sea of Galilee 2,000 years ago. Similarly, a multitude of more than 150,000 will need to be spiritually fed by fewer than 100 priests in parishes in the St. Cloud Diocese during the next 10 years.

Christ performed a miracle to feed his multitude. Bishop Kinney trusts Christ will do the same, if need be, to help him feed his.

"There are few loaves and few fish in this day and age," he said. "But this is not a time for hand-wringing. It is a historic and graced moment. More people than ever before are involved in ministry to the church, and they want to be involved more. That bodes well for the future."

"We need a mushrooming of additional ministries, and more trained ministers, so that God's voice of hope, hands of justice and heart of mercy can be taken all the way to the ends of our diocese and beyond," Bishop Kinney said.

"Another miracle is going to happen."

by Joseph Young, Visitor Staff Writer